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Cam Cole: Under Masters boss Payne's plan, not the same old Augusta National

Author of the article:

Cam Cole

Publishing date:

April 5, 2016 • 4 minute read

Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland fires away from the sixth tee during a practice round on Monday, April 4, 2016, prior to the start of the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., on Thursday, April 7.Harry How/ Getty Images

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The chairman of the club and of the Masters Tournament will do this to compensate for moving us away from the prime real estate we currently occupy, 250 yards or so down the right side of the No. 1 fairway, to a new facility at the far end of the practice range.

When it is built, a process no one will ever see, it will look as though it has always been there, because that’s how they do it around here. Oh, and it will be connected to the first hole by an underground tunnel, with shuttles, yet.

There are no half measures at the Masters, a golf extravaganza that generates so much revenue, it has to find ways to spend the money and seems never to run out of ideas. On TV, it may always look like your father’s Masters. But outside the ropes, on Billy Payne’s watch, it’s not the same old Augusta National.

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“They built a new data centre down there by the end of the range,” said one staffer. “A friend of mine said they had a tree beside it that turned brown. He went out for lunch and came back an hour-and-a-half later and there was a 30-foot green tree in its place.”

Change has been a constant at the picture-postcard course Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts had built, by Dr. Alister MacKenzie, in the early 1930s. But since Payne took over, change has been on amphetamines.

To the golf holes themselves, the club has chronicled a total of 99 changes since 1937, not counting reversing the nines for the second Masters in 1935. Without a native guide to point them out, most of the alterations in mounding, bunkering, tee boxes and greens are — like the inner workings of the club itself, like the SubAir vacuum system operating underground that can regulate the amount of moisture in the fairways and greens — invisible.

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You used to drive toward the golf course up Washington Road, that tawdry monument to strip malls and heartburn with Hooters and Waffle House and every kind of fast-food chain known to man, and turn right at the water tower onto Berckmans Road.

But now Berckmans Road has been re-routed to skirt the land the golf club acquired; land now used as a massive patrons parking lot (free, of course), all landscaped and treed where a whole neighbourhood once stood.

One by one, quietly, the club bought the houses. Eventually, the remaining owners figured out they should hold out for more.

“There was an old couple who hung onto their place smack dab in the middle of the parking lot,” said a local spy. “They finally moved into a retirement home last year, whereupon their kids sold the place to the club for $3 million. The parents had probably paid $28,000 for it, new.”

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Patrons arrive to watch a practice round on Monday, April 4, 2016 at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., where the 80th Masters Golf Tournament will start on Thursday, April 7.DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

It’s only money, and Augusta National has scads of it.

One year, 2010, the gravel lot inside the club’s treed boundary fence, where the media and assorted other quasi-VIPs had always parked, was just … gone.

In its place, magically, was the most beautiful practice area in the history of practice areas. All done over one summer, fall and winter. With mature pine trees and target “greens” and bunkers, alongside a tournament-fast putting green.

Only Masters competitors are permitted to use the range. Ordinary members, as if there were such people, have to use the old range, which still operates to the left of Magnolia Lane as you (well, probably not you) drive up to the clubhouse.

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The same year the new range opened, a group of eye-popping hospitality cottages appeared — presto! — between the main spectator entrance and the current press building. Fully and maturely landscaped, looking like little Augusta clubhouses.

Up went Berckmans Place, a hospitality complex down beyond Amen Corner so opulent, it has five full-service restaurants, an Irish pub, a pro shop, and replicas of the seventh, 14th and 16th greens, on which patrons can practise putting with Pro V1 golf balls and top-end putters (supplied), and authentic Augusta National caddies to read the putts and tend the flagsticks.

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All for only $8,000 for a weekly badge, food and drink included.

That exclusive private enclave that was all about golf? Only before and after the Masters. During it, Billy Payne’s Augusta National has gotten itself neck-deep in the hospitality business, and way ahead of the curve.

Next up? The club is trying to purchase the ninth hole of the neighbouring Augusta Country Club, which sits above and beyond Augusta National’s iconic 12th green, separated only by a line of trees. There is talk of using the acquired land to move the tee back on the par-five, dogleg 13th — a crime against one of the greatest golf holes in the world, all because of the distances modern players can hit their super-powered golf balls.

It’s one of Payne’s few bad ideas, at least since he ran the Atlanta Olympics. But nobody’s perfect.

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